Don't have an account?

Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Barbara Bernard: 'Hairspray,' not the movie or the musical

Columnist Barbara Bernard is shown here with a group of women fwho have been getting together for years, from left to right, Joyce Webster, Bernard, Ann LeBlanc, Bobbie Quirk,and Joyce Curran, all are from Holyoke.
(Mark M. Murray | The Republican)

I have just bought my first bottle of hair spray. I did it on the advice of three hair stylists, a few honest friends and a 4-year-old who said, “GG..why you hair stick up?” (GG means ‘great grandmother’.)

Trust me, I have had bigger problems in life than bad hair days, but I was born with that one.

Every photo which was ever taken of me shows a head of hair that was dark and curly with those curls uncontrolled. At one time my Uncle Frank, a drummer and an electrician, fashioned himself as a barber. During Depression years every Saturday morning any kid in the neighborhood was welcome to come to our big barn and get his or her hair cut free. He never made this offer to adults because he knew the local barber was having as big a hardship as others, but children were getting their hair cut by their parents and he felt he could do as good if not better job. He was right. and it sure helped budgets.

The interesting thing is that all of us children looked alike. The boys had short cuts with nice trims around their ears and necks, and for the girls Uncle Frank devised what was known as the “Dutch Cut," straight bangs and hair cut in a straight line from one ear around the back to meet the other ear.

It looked great on Frummy Sheman, Annie Pindick, Helen Taskin, Margaret Green, Mary Anne Ahearn, Celie Como and Nancy Williams. It looked just OK on me except there was always a wayward curl which would pop out. It was not very sanitary but many a day some relative would spit on his or her finger and hit that curl in an effort to pat it down with the rest of my hair.

By second-grade someone made the decision, certainly not I, that the thing to do with my hair was let it grow and wear it in braids, or pigtails, a name I objected to. I had seen pigs on Mr. Junta’s farm where my parents took me to see farm animals. Pigs had short curly little tails so I could never comprehend why long braids were called pigtails.

My hair grew and grew as did my best friend’s Nancy Williams. Whenever there was a need for two girls who looked alike to be in a play or pageant, we were chosen, always looking like twins.

The shampooing of my hair was a project, not so much the shampooing but the drying which is where one of Uncle Frank’s girlfriends came in handy.

Let me explain that Uncle Frank, my mother's youngest brother, lived with us until World War II when he became the chief electrician at the Mare Island shipyards in California. I don’t think there was a more handsome man in North Adams, tall, dark hair, wonderful smile, talented drummer (for a few years he played professionally with Charlie Barnett’s orchestra, mostly on the Cuba tours), great tennis player and a man who made every single woman (and a few married ones, too) envy whoever he was dating at the time.

Because these women knew I was the apple of his eye, they were all extra nice to his only niece. One woman and her family owned a grocery store in Adams, and she always brought me a special treat when she came to visit. She was my favorite.

My mother’s favorite was the woman who owned a beauty parlor because she loved to shampoo my hair, fuss with it a little, still have me end up with my long braids but with little flourishes with wayward curls around my forehead. There was a professional hair dryer at the salon, something we did not have at home which meant a shorter time for the weekly shampoo. Can you imagine only one shampoo a week compared to today’s daily one in the shower?.

When I was graduating from eighth-grade and about to enter high school I told my family there was only one thing I wanted for a graduation gift and that was to have my hair cut. Before the day of the haircut which found tears in my mother’s and aunts’ eyes, my mother had my photo taken with that hair hanging long past my waist. Some people look at that photo and say I look like an Italian saint. No comment from me.

My mother saved those braids, and alas, I guess like mother like daughter, I saved the long braids both my daughters had. For years I tried to give them to the girls for Christmas and they would wrap them and return them to me the next Christmas. A few years ago I gave all six long braids to the Locks for Love program. Amazing but no matter how old hair is, it is still usable.

From that braid-cutting day to today has been a battle. I don’t perm or color my hair, and sometimes in desperation I cut my own hair. Several hairstylists, including some famous ones in New York (gifts of fashion designers for whom I wrote copy) tried their best which looked gorgeous until the first breeze blew... I lost a little of the curl with each baby I had. I wonder if I had had 12 children if I would have the straight hair I could manage. Admittedly that’s a poor reason for having a dozen children.

The lovely stylist who last cut my hair said the waves in it looked like a style in Downton Abbey. Hoping she meant Lady Mary, I looked and decided it was more like Maggie Smith’s character or one of the women who work in the kitchen at the abbey.

At any rate, I have the bottle of hair spray, and, when I shampoo my hair and it dries and one of those cowlicks, which kind people call waves and I call nuisances, pops up, I am going to hit it with hair spray, a better choice than spit.